WVU’s Research Milestones is a bi-annual roundup of recent activity performed by a talented and growing roster of faculty and student researchers. Their diverse work enhances WVU’s leadership role in improving the well-being of the people of West Virginia as it pursues global engagement and educational achievement. For more information on these and other stories about WVU’s accelerating march toward greater national research prominence, visit research.wvu.edu — Fred L. King PhD, Interim Vice President for Research
QR CODES IN THIS PUBLICATION For the convenience of our readers we have provided QR codes with each article blurb, which when scanned with a camera enabled smart phone or tablet containing a QR code scanner app, will take them to the full version of that article on the WVU Research website.
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IMPROVING HEALTH, ENERGY AND SECURITY WITH NANOTOXICITY RESEARCH NSF AWARDS WVU $3 MILLION FOR MULTIFACETED EFFORT
WVU received a $3 million grant that could ultimately improve health care, energy, homeland security, the environment and transportation in the state and the nation. The grant comes from the Integrated Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program of the National Science Foundation. The project is called Research and Education in Nanotoxicity at WVU (REN@WVU). The grant, one of only 18 awarded this year, joins researchers from the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and will provide graduate students unique opportunities to pursue research and innovation in the field of nanotoxicity. Diandra LesliePelecky PhD, Professor of Physics in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, is the principal investigator on the grant.
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DEVELOPING NEW TECHNOLOGIES TO KEEP AMERICA SAFER UNIVERSITY RESEARCH FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE There was a time not long ago when nighttime military operations were difficult to impossible and the he only tools security forces had to recognize the faces of potential enemies in the day time were pictures and human memory.
algorithm development is a process that can not only help give soldiers the ability to recognize faces in the dark but also create high tech tools for environmental monitoring, aerial imaging for agricultural applications and astronomical imaging.
Technology breakthroughs made great strides in addressing the situations. Today, night vision technology is common on the battlefield and facial recognition hardware and software is a staple even on television dramas. But facial recognition technology to keep the peace in low light and nighttime situations has been elusive.
Face recognition systems in use today are designed to operate on visible light data collected from still images or video sequences. The process centers on a comparison of collected images with new image captures in order to determine a match and thus recognize and identify a face. But the lack of light at night prevents those high performance systems from performing accurately enough to be effective.
Natalia Schmid PhD, an associate professor of computer science at the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, has taken up the challenge of working on an advanced weapon sight program to provide additional advantages on the ever-changing battlefield. Schmid received a $74,438 grant, primarily from the Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate of the Army Research Lab, to tackle what experts in the field call “cross spectral facial recognition algorithm development.” Cross spectral facial recognition
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Schmid’s work could mean a safer battlefield, more effective environmental monitoring, and vast improvement in the way scientists use aerial imaging to keep track of agriculture and track the night sky. Photo Courtesy: army.mil
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DESIGNING TOMORROW’S ENERGY-EFFICIENT HOME WITH YESTERDAY’S TOUCHES
MAKING AMERICANS’ DEVICES SMALLER, FASTER AND MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT
WVU STUDENT TEAM MAKING BIG IMPACT ON NATIONAL
WV RESEARCHERS SEEK TO SAVE ENERGY AND INCREASE
WVU students competing in a US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon are out to make a solar home that looks as cool as they sound. As part of their participation in the design-and-build competition, the 18-member WVU team merged innovative technologies of tomorrow with the rustic comfort of the countryside.
With the help of a Research Challenge Grant, professors across the state of West Virginia are pushing technologies to go smaller and faster– all in the name of energy conservation.
SOLAR DECATHLON COMPETITION
Pictured left is the model of the student design for the solar decathlon competition.
SPEED BY CHANGING ELECTRONICS
David Lederman PhD, Robert L. Carroll professor of Physics in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded the grant to create a center that investigates and develops new paradigms for electronic devices that not only use less energy than today’s technologies, but also operate faster than those currently on the market. The grant, funded by the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, is worth $1.35 million. The project, called “A Center for Energy Efficient Electronics at West Virginia University and Marshall University,” commenced July 1 and will continue through June 30, 2017.
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TEACHING ELECTRIC DRIVE VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY TO TOMORROW’S AUTOMOTIVE TECHNICIANS NATIONAL ALTERNATIVE FUELS TRAINING CONSORTIUM REACHES OUT
America’s high schools have offered specialized automotive training for generations of technicians who then kept family cars and business vehicles humming on the highways. But, the evolution of transportation in the 21st Century is bringing a new kind of alternative fuel automobiles into service bays across the nation along with a new set of challenges to men and women preparing to keep those cars on the road. The National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium, is on a mission to properly introduce these new advanced electric drive vehicles to the people who will service them right where automotive education begins — in the nation’s high schools.
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REFINING WOOD AS AN ALTERNATIVE FUEL RESEARCHERS TEAM WITH NATIONAL LAB TO RELOOK AT WOOD AS AN ALTERNATIVE FUEL
One professor and two graduate students are working to discover ways to make an alternative fuel more efficient. Ben Dawson-Andoh PhD, a professor in the Davis College of Agriculture Natural Resources and Design, Division of Forestry and Natural Resources, and his two doctoral students, Gideon Lawer-Yolar and Emmanuel Atta-Obeng, traveled to Oak Ridge National Laboratories to study the composition of lignin, a substance in wood that limits its use as an alternative fuel and as a source of chemical products. Oak Ridge National Laboratories is a national lab that provides a technology called Small Angle Neutron Scattering that will allow the three to further understand the structure of lignin. “It’s a great opportunity for all of us involved to work at a national lab,” Dawson-Andoh said. “This has been a major part of my research for the past five or six years, and hopefully this will allow for more discovery.”
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CREATING A NEW TECHNOLOGY TO KEEP THE LIGHTS ON WVU TO ESTABLISH CENTER TO DEVELOP NEXT GENERATION OF ELECTRIC STORAGE BATTERIES WVU experts are at work on a new generation of affordable, high capacity electric storage batteries that could help keep a busy nation’s lights shining brightly even in the aftermath of crippling weather events like the storm that violently knocked out power to millions of Americans last July. In addition to providing power in emergency situations, the electric storage batteries WVU wants to develop could be the bridge between West Virginia’s heritage of fossil energy production and the promise of renewable energy output that can keep America’s lights aglow and the state’s economy humming for decades. An experienced research team composed of experts from a range of WVU colleges is set to explore that possibility and develop the technology to make it a reality under a major new initiative called the Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage or CEES.
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The initiative just received a $1.3 million Research Challenge Grant from the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission’s Division of Science and Research. Team leader and principal investigator Xingbo Liu PhD, is ready to flip the switches to start the process. Liu, an associate professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of the WVU Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, said large scale batteries are key to future efforts to regulate and maintain a steady stream of power from both traditional fossil fuel and new emerging renewable sources of electricity.
HELPING IMPROVE MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH THROUGH RESEARCH WVU EXPERT NAMED TO HELP GUIDE MINE SAFETY INNOVATIONS
WVU mine safety expert Keith Heasley PhD has been selected as one of three directors of a $48 million research fund created to improve mine safety in the wake of the Upper Big Branch disaster that killed 29 West Virginia coal miners in April 2010. Heasley is the Charles T. Holland Professor of Mining Engineering in the Department of Mining Engineering in the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. Together with collegues from other universities and organizations, Heasley will direct the Alpha Foundation for the Improvement of Mine Safety and Health Inc., created with an endowment from Alpha Natural Resources as part of its non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia and the U.S. Department of Justice. Alpha purchased the Big Branch Mine from Massey Energy, which owned the underground mine in Montcoal, WV, when the tragedy occurred.
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DEVELOPING SMART PHONE APP TO HELP FIRST RESPONDERS
UNRAVELING THE MYSTERIES OF GENETICS TO HELP FEED A HUNGRY WORLD
NAFTC WORKS TO EDUCATE EMERGENCY WORKERS
NSF GRANT ENABLES RESEARCHES TO INVESTIGATE
Despite their demonstrated safety and efficiency, some of the new electric drive and alternative fuel vehicles that are becoming more common on American highways will inevitably be involved in highway accidents. When first responders are called to help, “there’s an app for that” thanks to experts at a WVU center. The WVU-based National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium has created a suite of modern technology products, including in-depth training programs, that put knowledge about specific electric drive and alternative fuel vehicles at the fingertips of the nation’s first responders. The NAFTC developed the smart phone app — “QRG,” which stands for quick reference guide — for first responders who need to access information about electric drive and alternative fuel vehicles at accident scenes. The app contains information on electric drive vehicles such as hybrid, plug-in hybrid, battery and fuel cell electric vehicles and vehicles powered by alternative fuels like biodesel, ethanol, natural gas, propane and hydrogen. 12
GENETICS PUZZLE
As a child, WVU’s Jennifer Hawkins PhD, professor of Biology in Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, became fascinated with jigsaw puzzles — the kind with lots and lots of pieces. Armed with a life-long curiosity about how complex puzzles fit together, a professional and personal goal of improving people’s lives through research, and a big new grant from the National Science Foundation, Hawkins is set to unravel the mysteries of how plants use genetically coded information to build protein molecules that affect the way they look and function. It’s work that could someday lead to a more effective way to grow food or even eliminate birth defects. Hawkins is using the opportunity to tackle a tough puzzle and provide a positive experience for WVU students who are in line to help with the project.
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FINDING WAYS TO DISCOVER THE MATTER THAT FORMED THE STARS PHYSICS PROFESSOR’S CAREER IS HEADED TOWARD THE STARS For billions of years, there have been stars.
Pisano has designed a clear and simple test to help solve the case of the missing matter.
And all but a tenth of the fuel that creates them is nowhere to be found. These two facts make for an uneasy coexistence, creating an effect without a visible cause. Stars have formed at a rate so much greater than the observed quantity of gas such as hydrogen and helium in galaxies. Logically, stars should have stopped coming into being by now. But there is fuel to form the stars that keep turning up in the night sky. You just have to find it. D.J. Pisano PhD, assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, wants to make the invisible visible.
His work is so persuasive that the National Science Foundation has awarded him five years of funding through the prestigious CAREER award, designed to help young faculty on their way toward bright careers and tenure. Pisano is the 15th WVU faculty member to receive the award and has garnered the most funds of any CAREER award recipient at the institution at nearly $800,000. His award also gives the Department of Physics the highest number of faculty honored at WVU with this award. M33 Triangulum Galaxy Photo: Courtesy of National Science Foundation.
Pisano’s observations of even one portion of a galaxy can take hundreds of hours of work on a radio telescope. It’s painstaking work that involves studying subtle changes in wavelength patterns on a far-away star and disregarding the incredibly bright patterns of interference caused by nearby cell phones. 14
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FINDING CLUES TO WHAT MOTIVATED THE MONGOLS TO CONQUER
UNDERSTANDING THE ATTRACTION OF THE NEW RIVER GORGE CLIFFS
WVU RESEARCHER FINDS SURPRISING EVIDENCE IN
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE LOOKS TO WVU FOR ANSWERS
For hundreds of years, historians have proposed, examined and fought over just what made the Mongol hordes of the 11th Century tick. A WVU researcher discovered some unexpected insight into what might have caused the hordes to rumble and roll into one of the world’s most terrifying empires after she visited Mongolia and brought home some very old and odd slices of wood.
A team of researchers at WVU want to better understand the cliffs surrounding the New River Gorge and what attracts visitors to the world-class climbing area in order to preserve it. WVU was awarded a $235,000 grant from the National Park Service to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the cliffs in the New River Gorge National River.
One of the most popular theories for the Mongol expansion was that the hordes started taking from their neighbors when they were forced to flee drought conditions that made resources of their own very scarce. But a discovery by Amy Hessl PhD, professor of Geography in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, just might turn that theory on its ear by proposing that the spark behind the great Mongol empire expansion just may have been rain, not drought.
The three-year, interdisciplinary project, which began in 2010, includes an assessment of geological and botanical components, as well as a comprehensive assessment of recreational users of the cliff areas.
ANCIENT WOOD SAMPLES
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ON NEW RIVER GORGE CLIFFS
Leading the team is Dave Smaldone PhD, associate professor of recreation, parks and tourism resources in the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design. He is joined by Steven Kite, associate professor of geology and geography, and Amy Hessl, associate professor of geography, both in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. 17
INVESTIGATING THE CAUSES BEHIND WAR CRIMES, OBEDIENCE AND RESPONSIBILITY PHILOSOPHY ASSISTANT PROFESSORS TASKED WITH EXAMINATION OF MOTIVATIONS Details of wartime atrocities, from mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners of war to the butchering of villagers in remote African nations, seem to jump off the pages of news accounts and slap readers’ sensibilities with a heavy hand of moral outrage and confusion. Far removed geographically and emotionally from the events, civilians struggle with questions surrounding the atrocities. Why do soldiers commit war crimes? How much does institutionalized policy, peer pressure or the convolutions of combat training influence the character of individuals who end up wielding instruments of torture and death against innocent victims?
Jessica Wolfendale PhD and Matt Talbert PhD (inset), were recently awarded a grant through the Character Project at Wake Forest University funded by the John Templeton Foundation to investigate the philosophical aspects of war crimes and write a book detailing their resulting theories. The project, “Failures of Character: War Crimes, Obedience, and Responsibility,” may go a long way toward helping the world understand what contributes to instances of wartime atrocities and, the researchers hope, lead to steps to avoid future crimes. War Photo: Courtesy of gwpda.org/photos
Two West Virginia University philosophy assistant professors in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences will be spending the next year formalizing insightful answers to those and other questions that lie at the motivational heart of war crimes and whether individuals who commit them are responsible for their actions.
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EXAMINING BLACK BEAR ACTIVITY FOR CLUES TO INCREASED SIGHTINGS
SAVING CROPS, BUSINESSES AND MONEY
WVU GRAD STUDENT LOOKS AT GROWING BEAR ACTIVITY
A peach grower in Georgia thought he had the perfect set-up for a new business. He fumigated the site to kill any pests or pathogens that might have stopped the trees from thriving. But, weeks later when there were no signs of growth, he panicked. Through a local extension agent, he contacted WVU’s Joe Morton PhD, professor of Plant and Soil Sciences in Davis College of of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design who helped save his business.
IN URBAN AREAS
Tri grew up in the north woods of Minnesota with black bears practically in his backyard. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in fisheries and wildlife from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Tri of Oak Grove, Minnesota, knew he wanted to work with bears. Under the guidance of John Edwards PhD, professor of wildlife and fisheries resources in the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design, Tri has been studying the spatial ecology of urban and suburban black bears in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Funded through the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, Tri is working with wildlife agencies in the three participating states in the hopes of better understanding why black bears inhabit urban and suburban areas, tracking their movements within the areas, and evaluating their vulnerability to hunting. 20
WVU IS HOME TO UNUSUAL BUT HELPFUL RESOURCE
“By fumigating the land, he’d killed off beneficial fungi in the soil that the trees needed for hardy growth,” Morton explained. Acting on the advice, the grove owner brought in fungi-rich topsoil from neighboring land and the trees were given a new chance at life. What Morton passed on was a simple tip, the kind of knowledge he’s dispensed for the past three decades without much credit or public recognition. Morton is not only the owner and caretaker of the world’s largest collection of arbuscular endomycorrhizal fungi, but he’s also one of the world’s leading authorities on the stuff.
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HELPING UNDERSTAND AND PREVENT CHILDHOOD OBESITY
ADDRESSING CRITICAL HEALTH ISSUES FOR ALL WEST VIRGINIANS
CHOOSE TO CHANGE PROJECT SEEKS TO ADDRESS MAJOR
$19.6 MILLION GRANT AWARDED FOR WV CLINICAL AND
A team of WVU researchers have spent a year mapping community-level factors associated with childhood obesity. The Choose to Change project, funded by a $4.7-million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has completed extensive community assessments of Kanawha and Monongalia counties.
The Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center has been awarded a $19.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that will be used to address the health issues that most commonly affect West Virginians.
HEALTH ISSUE
Team members conducted the Nutrition Environment Measures Survey (NEMS) to assess the availability, price, and quality of healthier foods in more than 1,000 stores and restaurants, in the two counties. Others constructed a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) database to explore the environment as it relates to physical activity. And others conducted focus groups of parents, educators, and other community members to get a more personal lay of the land and understand a range of perspectives on the obesity epidemic. Photo Courtesey: Wikimedia Commons Š Wsiegmund.
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TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCE INSTITUTE
The grant to the West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute (WVCTSI) is part of the NIH Institutional Development Award Program for Clinical and Translational Research (IDeACTR). The federal program provides funding for the development of infrastructure and to enable scientists to become more competitive for NIH and other biomedical research funding opportunities over the next five years. Clinical and translational research is defined as research intended to move quickly from the laboratory to the patient that more directly and specifically affects patient care. The director of WVCTSI is Uma Sundaram, MD (right), professor and asst. VP of Health Sciences who spoke at the official announcement event. 23
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